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18 MAY 2012 VOL 336 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org 832
CR
ED
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(T
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UG
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THE CORPSES WERE LEFT TO ROT BY THE
hundreds in the hot Syrian sun. The victors
whittled three dozen or more of the human
arm and leg bones into pointed sticks, perhaps
as tools to further desecrate the skulls. After at
least a few weeks, the decomposing remains
were dragged a short distance and pushed
into a trash pit. Then the victors butchered
cows, sheep, and goats for an extravagant
barbecue. When they were done, the cele-
brants hurled the picked-over animal bones
and the ceramic plates, made especially for
the occasion, onto the decaying heap. Then
they returned to their homes in
the nearby prosperous city.
As fi ghting engulfs the cit-
ies of modern Syria, the scene
above is stark proof that mass
warfare and civilization share
a 6000-year history. The kill-
ing field at Tell Brak, about
500 kilometers northeast of
Damascus near the Iraqi bor-
der, documents what is perhaps
the world’s oldest known large
massacre or organized battle.
When the violence occurred in
about 3800 B.C.E., this settle-
ment was evolving into one of
the world’s fi rst fl edgling cities.
What took place here and at
other sites where complex soci-
eties were starting to coalesce
is of particular interest to
researchers studying human violence. Some
scientists argue that civilization replaced
tribal anarchy with a more organized way of
life that reduced rates of violence (see p. 829).
But recent fi nds around the world suggest an
upsurge, not a decline, in violence during the
key period when societies transitioned from
the simpler organization of tribes and chief-
doms into complex urban life.
Even in the Near East, which has been
intensively excavated for more than a cen-
tury, scientists still grapple with fundamen-
tal questions about violence. There has been
surprisingly little physical evidence for war-
fare, massacres, or even widespread murder
here between the rise of agriculture around
10,000 B.C.E., when people were living in
less complex groups,
and the emergence of
the Akkadian Empire
around 2300 B.C.E.
Recent fi nds in north-
ern Syria, however,
suggest that violence
flared as urban life
fi rst began to take hold
between 4000 B.C.E.
and 3200 B.C.E.
The large settle-
ment of Hamoukar
was destroyed around
3500 B.C.E.; a team
there found hundreds
of what they main-
tain are sling bullets
(Science, 31 August
2007, p. 1164). Even
more startling, in
2007 and 2008, University of Cambridge
archaeologists found three mass graves dat-
ing from about 3800 B.C.E. to 3600 B.C.E. at
Tell Brak. The oldest and largest grave was at
least 20 meters long and 4 meters wide, and
included a jumbled pile of at least several hun-
dred people—by far the earliest undisputed
example of an event of mass violence. In a
2011 paper in the Journal of Field Archae-
ology, dig director Augusta McMahon and
colleagues note that the majority of the dead
were between the ages of 20 and 35. Although
poor bone preservation makes it diffi cult to
establish gender and cause of death, the state
of the disarticulated bones suggests that the
individuals all died at the same time and
were left in the open for weeks or months.
Many of the victims had previous head inju-
ries that had healed.
The bodies’ exposure, delay in burial, the
careless collection of the rotting corpses—
which ignored smaller bones from the hands
and feet—and the casual disposal all “show
an extraordinary disregard” for the victims,
McMahon says, implying “that the dead were
enemies.” That is underscored by the fact that
more than 40 human bones were whittled to
make tools, which McMahon suggests were
used “to defl esh and empty trophy skulls,”
given that some skulls have deep scratches.
The apparent victors then celebrated an aston-
ishing feast involving as many as 75 cattle
and 300 sheep and goats. The remains of this
repast were tossed on top of the corpses and
then covered with dirt.
Whether the victims were locals or outsid-
ers remains unclear. Study of tooth enamel
from the bodies shows that at least some suf-
fered from malnutrition. Tell Brak sits in a
region prone to long-term drought and may
have stored a surplus that drew hungry mobs;
it also had workshops that harbored a wealth
of beautiful objects that may have attracted
envious invaders or spurred civil war.
McMahon suspects internal strife because
Tell Brak was so populous in this period that
it was not very vulnerable to outsiders. She
notes that the callous treatment of corpses
may have been “a useful control device” to
deter internal discontent. Whatever the fi ght,
it was clearly an organized killing fi eld. “Here
you see mass violence … motivated or con-
trolled by central authorities,” says archaeolo-
gist Henry Wright of the University of Michi-
gan, Ann Arbor.
Peaceable kingdom? On the other side of Asia, in the jungles of
Thailand and Cambodia, complex society
Recent archaeological fi nds from the Near East to Southeast Asia of ancient massacres
raise questions about how violence changed as societies became more complex
Feast and famine. The rotting corpses of these
Tell Brak victims were thrown into a pit with the
remains of a massive barbecue.
Making their point. Tell Brak dig direc-
tor Augusta McMahon examines a human
bone shaped into a pointed tool.
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arrived several millennia later. Small villages
predominated here for centuries, until about
900 C.E., when the fi rst complex society arose
around Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
Until recently, there has been a remark-
able dearth of evidence for violence here
during the region’s Iron Age before the
rise of Angkor. In that period, which began
about 500 B.C.E., iron tools and weapons
appeared, and tribes appear
to have coalesced into more
organized chiefdoms run by
an elite.
But recent work shows that
Southeast Asia was no peace-
able kingdom just before or
during the rise of Angkor. At a
site in Cambodia called Phum
Snay, about 80 kilometers
northwest of what became the
capital of Angkor Wat, archae-
ologists from Australia and
New Zealand have found an
array of sophisticated military
artifacts such as swords (some
more than 1 meter in length),
daggers, spearheads, and
epaulettes, as well as signs of
violent confl ict dating between
100 C.E. and 300 C.E.
Researchers estimate that
of 30 skeletons from the town’s
cemetery, nearly a quarter had
traumatic bone lesions, with
males having more than females. Given the
location and type of injury, these wounds are
more likely due to interpersonal violence
than accidents, says biological anthropolo-
gist Kathryn Dommett of James Cook Uni-
versity in Townsville, Australia, lead author
of a 2011 Antiquity paper on the subject. And
because soft-tissue wounds are not recorded,
the level of violence likely was even higher.
This data meshes with the results from
digs across the border in Thailand. Com-
bining satellite imagery with fieldwork,
archaeologists have mapped dozens of large
settlements surrounded by elaborate moats
and ramparts from this era. “This is a period
of intense political development and pos-
sibly increased competition,” says archae-
ologist Dougald O’Reilly of the Australian
National University in Canberra, who led
the Cambodian dig and has published on
the Thai fi nds.
That is borne out at the Thai site of Noen
U-Loke. Archaeologist Charles Higham of
the University of Otago in Dunedin, New
Zealand, found evidence for intercommu-
nity confl ict in a sudden proliferation of iron
projectile points in the Iron Age, including
one lodged in the spine of a young adult
male; an older female had her head cut and
smashed. Other sites, such as Ban Wang
Hai, a village just to the north, have yielded
iron swords and other weapons not associ-
ated with hunting.
O’Reilly says that the prevalence of
“blunt force wounds” in this period points
to either ritual warfare or a scramble to con-
trol resources such as iron. “There is a lot of
evidence of increased warfare” just before
the rise of Angkor, Higham says. O’Reilly
believes that such confl ict arose as popula-
tions increased along with competition for
resources. As at Tell Brak, when other types
of social complexity rose, so did the scale
and complexity of warfare.
Archaeologist Glenn Schwartz of Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, Mary-
land, notes that “early complex societies were
able to organize much more effective kill-
ing machines, given their administrative and
technological capabilities and large popu-
lations.” So while laws, fortifications, and
armies may have protected the bulk of the cit-
izenry, when warfare did take place, it could
be on a greater scale and ferocity than among
the preceding smaller groups. “The nature of
warfare changes,” says anthropologist Patrick
Nolan of the University of South Carolina,
Columbia. “The frequency may decrease but
the scale goes up.”
Historian Azar Gat of Tel Aviv Univer-
sity in Israel warns that the spectacle of
large battles may mask the more important
truth that a given individual in a complex
society would be less likely to die from vio-
lence. “Ramses II took 20,000 troops to
fi ght the Hittites,” he says of the 13th cen-
tury B.C.E. Egyptian king. “But the popula-
tion of Egypt was 2 or 3 million. They were
largely sheltered.”
Even as they document cases
of violence in early
states, archaeolo-
gists are hesitant
to generalize about
long-term trends
because archaeol-
ogy can provide
only glimpses of
the past. For exam-
ple, ancient texts
describe bloody battles in the
Near East in the 2nd millennium
B.C.E., but archaeologists have
found few sites to support the
textual history. That’s why single
fi nds, such as the one at Tell Brak,
can quickly rewrite old views—
but should be considered cau-
tiously, researchers say. “Seren-
dipitous data discovery in archae-
ology frequently refutes statisti-
cal laws,” says Yale University
archaeologist Harvey Weiss.
Instead of trends in rates of violence,
some researchers focus on how it assumed
new forms, such as institutional slavery and
human sacrifi ce, that are not seen in simpler
societies. “Warfare and slavery go hand in
hand” in the ancient world, Nolan says. Most
slaves, he says, were captives of war, often
the wives and children of slain soldiers.
Brutal human sacrifi ce also appears as early
states consolidate and display their power
(see p. 834).
Many complex societies quickly devel-
oped moral codes and written laws designed
to protect the young, the poor, and the
defenseless. But they also found a galaxy of
reasons to punish nonviolent behavior with
violence, as U.S. sociologist Steven Spitzer
and French philosopher Michel Foucault
have noted. Sexual deviance, religious her-
esy, and betrayal of the state all could be
punished with tortures and extended impris-
onment undreamed of by our ancestors in
simpler societies. The rise of civilization
was indeed a double-edged sword.
–ANDREW LAWLER
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 336 18 MAY 2012 833
SPECIALSECTION
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Remains of the day. Murder victims at Phum Snay show traumatized wounds and are examined by O’Reilly (inset, on left) and a colleague.
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